The forest had never been silent like this.
Not even the wind dared stir. No chirping insects. No rustling leaves. The trees stood like burnt sentinels—sickly, skeletal things with bark blackened to charcoal and branches curled inward like grasping claws. Ash floated in the air like snow, catching faint moonlight that filtered through a sky choked with smoke. Ivyra could feel it—the tension in the air, like the moment before a scream. The stillness wasn't natural. It was mourning.
Or warning.
She stood at the edge of the ruin, a crumbled circle of obsidian stone partially buried in the ashen earth. Her fingers remained curled around the blade, its presence no longer foreign to her grip. It pulsed against her skin—not heat, not cold, but something deeper. A heartbeat. Not hers, but in tune with it.
It wasn't forged in any fire man or god had ever known. It looked like bone and void had fused, runes etched in threads of dying starlight and ancient blood. The edge flickered—not light, but shadow pretending to be light.
Lyxra loomed beside her in his beast form, vast and wild, fur like night speckled with cosmic dust. His body shimmered, reflecting stars that didn't exist in the current sky. Each breath steamed, frost creeping around his feet. His silver eyes narrowed as he regarded her—not just with concern, but reverence tinged with unease.
"You're not the same," he said quietly, his voice like distant thunder wrapped in velvet.
"I know." Her voice held no tremble, but her hand gave her away, fingers twitching minutely as the blade responded with a hum that resonated in the bones.
From behind, footsteps crunched. Serren emerged from the smoke, coughing, her braid half-undone, cloak torn at the hem. Naia clung tightly to her, small and wide-eyed, her soft hands smudged with soot and dried tears.
"The villagers…" Serren panted. "They scattered when the fires started. The sky turned red. The wards failed. Everything's gone."
A cold smile touched Ivyra's lips, one that didn't reach her eyes.
"Good," she whispered, the word tasting like ash.
Naia stepped forward, her small voice barely audible over the distant creaks of settling ruin. "Does it hurt?"
Ivyra looked down at the girl. The child's eyes were too knowing for her age, as if they, too, remembered something their body didn't.
"No," Ivyra answered. Then, softer: "Not yet."
Beneath their feet, the ground gave a subtle pulse—a heartbeat in stone. The ruins breathed. Lyxra stiffened, fur bristling.
"Something else woke up with the blade," he said, his voice low and taut.
"A guardian?" Serren asked, voice uncertain.
Ivyra shook her head slowly. "No. A watcher."
Serren's brow furrowed. "What's the difference?"
"A guardian protects. A watcher remembers." Her eyes darkened. "It's been waiting a long time."
---
She descended alone into the ruin's heart.
Each step into the darkness felt heavier than the last, the weight not physical but spiritual—as if the air itself resisted her, as though the ruin did not welcome her, but recognized her. The walls were inked in glyphs half-eaten by time, yet they pulsed faintly as she passed, lighting briefly beneath her shadow like they were greeting something they hadn't seen in ages.
Her breath fogged in the stale air, each inhale colder than the one before. She walked slowly, each step echoing too loud.
At the center lay the relic: a mirror, if one could still call it that. It wasn't glass—no reflection greeted her. Instead, it shimmered with a surface like liquid obsidian, silver-black and impossible to look at directly. It was framed in tarnished gold, shaped in arcs and stars. Symbols hovered above its edge, shifting too quickly to be read.
She approached and stared into it.
She didn't see herself.
She saw a sky not her own, galaxies chained together by filaments of fire and bone. A thousand lives screaming without mouths. A city ablaze. A woman in gold robes collapsing beneath a bleeding moon.
And then—him. A god with no face. A crown made of writhing serpents. A scream frozen in eternity.
Then a voice came—older than memory, neither male nor female.
> "You were always meant to burn."
She gasped, hand darting up to her chest—but there was no wound, only heat under the skin. Still, her body ached as though scorched from within.
She reached out and touched the surface.
It rippled. Pain lanced through her skull.
A rush of memories that were not hers surged through her: fire swallowing oceans, screams in a language she had never learned, her own voice uttering names of gods long dead. A mountain crumbling under the weight of light. A blade piercing the heart of the world.
She stumbled back, gasping. The blade in her hand pulsed wildly now, runes glowing with light not from this world.
"It's not the blade that makes me dangerous," she whispered, realization breaking like a storm inside her.
"It's me."
---
When she rose from the depths, the air had changed.
Her footsteps echoed, and the others turned at the sound. Lyxra's ears flattened. Serren's breath caught in her throat.
And Naia, brave little Naia, took a step forward. "Your eyes…"
Ivyra looked at them.
They were no longer cold blue. They shimmered now with shifting colors—swirls of nebula and stardust swimming through ice. Like the night sky was bleeding through her soul.
Naia smiled, awed. "Did you see the stars?"
"I did."
"And?" the child asked.
"They remember me."
Lyxra lowered his head, not quite a bow, but close. The ruins groaned again, louder this time. Stones cracked. The air buzzed with magic too vast to comprehend.
Serren swallowed hard. "We… we need to leave. Now."
Ivyra turned her gaze to the sky, where a streak of violet flame etched itself briefly across the heavens like a falling god.
"Yes," she said. "It's time."
Lyxra shifted to a smaller form beside her, wings folding close. Naia grabbed Ivyra's free hand, her grip tight but trusting.
They left the ruins behind.
But Ivyra knew…
They were not leaving alone.
---